Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas
Reducing Crude Oil Imports
Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas is working in collaboration with various Central Government Ministries to achieve the goal to reduce the dependency on import from oil and gas. The five-pronged strategy, in this context, broadly comprises of increasing domestic production of oil and gas, promoting energy efficiency and conservation measures, giving thrust on demand substitution, capitalizing untapped potential in biofuels and other alternate fuels/ renewables and implementing measures for refinery process improvements.
The Government has taken several steps to enhance exploration & production of oil and gas in the country which include; Policy for Relaxations, Extensions and Clarifications under Production Sharing Contract  regime for early monetization of hydrocarbon discoveries, Discovered Small Field Policy, Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy, Policy for Extension of Production Sharing Contracts, Policy for early monetization of Coal Bed Methane, Setting up of National Data Repository, Appraisal of Unappraised areas in Sedimentary Basins, Re-assessment of Hydrocarbon Resources, Policy framework to streamline the working of Production Sharing Contracts in Pre-NELP and NELP Blocks, Policy to Promote and Incentivize Enhanced Recovery Methods for Oil and Gas, Policy framework for exploration and exploitation of Unconventional Hydrocarbons under existing Production Sharing Contracts, Coal Bed Methane contracts and Nomination fields.
The Government in February, 2019 approved major reforms in exploration and licensing policy to enhance exploration activities, attract domestic and foreign investment in unexplored/unallocated areas of sedimentary basins and accelerate domestic production of oil and gas from existing fields. The policy reforms inter-alia aims to boost exploration activities with greater weightage to work programme, simplified fiscal and contractual terms, bidding of exploration blocks under Category II and III sedimentary basins without any production or revenue sharing to Government, early monetization of discoveries by extending fiscal incentives, incentivizing gas production including marketing and pricing freedom, induction of latest technology and capital, more functional freedom to National Oil Companies for collaboration and private sector participation for production enhancement methods in nomination fields, streamlining approval processes and promoting ease of doing business including electronic single window mechanism.
The Government is also promoting the usage of environment friendly transportation fuel, i.e. CNG by expanding the coverage of City Gas Distribution  network in the country. Government has also taken a number of initiatives to encourage the use of alternative fuels like ethanol and bio-diesel through Ethanol Blending in Petrol  Programme and Bio-diesel blending in diesel. To promote use of compressed bio gas, Government has launched Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation  on 01.10.2018. Government has also formulated a National Bio Fuel Policy 2018 to boost availability of biofuels in country. Currently, such poor households which don’t have LPG connections are provided with the connection under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana , subject to fulfilling terms and conditions of the Scheme. So far, more than 7.29 crore connections are released against the target of 8 crore.
This Information was given by the Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.